Pakistan Meteorological Department Drought Bulletin of Pakistan April-June 2016 National Drought Monitoring Centre Pakistan Meteorological Department Sector H-8/2, Islamabad – 44000,P.O.Box#1214, Phone # +92-51-9250598, Fax # +92-51-9250368 Website: www.pmd.gov.pk, Email: [email protected] Drought Bulletin April – June, 2016 S.No. Contents Page No. 1. Introduction 3 2. Historical Background 5 3. Rainfall Distribution(April –June) 2016 5 Rainfall andTemperature 7 4. Drought products; 9 i. Standardized Precipitation Index analysis 9 ii. Cumulative Precipitation Anomaly 9 iii. Soil Moisture Analysis 11 iv. Water level of Reservoirs 12 5. Agriculture 12 5.1 Crop Condition:April-2016 12 5.2 Crop Condition:May-2016 13 5.3 Crop Condition: June: 2016 14 6. District wise impact of drought 15 7. Government reactions to drought 15 8. Recommendations 16 9. Acknowledgement 16 10. References 16 This bulletin is regularly published on Quarterly basis under the guidance of Mr. Hazrat Mir, Chief Meteorologist, National Drought Monitoring Centre(NDMC), Islamabad. Editor: Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan, Director, NDMC, Islamabad Sub-Editor: Mr. Shahzada Adnan, Meteorologist, NDMC, Islamabad 2 Quarterly Drought Bulletin April – June, 2016 By National Drought/Environment Monitoring & Early Warning Centre, Pakistan Meteorological Department, Islamabad 1. Introduction Pakistan has a long latitudinal extent and the rainfall variability during different seasons is considerably high. The climate of the country in its lower southern half is arid and hyper-arid while the northern half of country lies between semi arid to very humid. Some regions of the country in each seasons, remain drastically dry and area always vulnerable to drought. If subsequent seasons fail to generate significant precipitation, the drought conditions then are sure to take the vulnerable regions in the grip. All the provinces of Pakistan have a history of facing major droughts in the past. Drought differs from other natural disaster (e.g. flood, tropical cyclones, tornadoes and earthquakes etc) in the sense that the effects of drought often accumulate slowly over a considerable period of time and may linger for years even after the termination of the event. Because of this drought is often referred to as a “Creeping Phenomena”. Drought impacts are less obvious and are spread over large geographical areas than are the damages that results from other natural hazards. Consequently drought affects more people than any other environmental hazard. Unfortunately, no organizations dealing with the drought issues exist in Pakistan and the responses to drought for the distressed economic and social sector, whenever such situation arose, were taken on emergency and on adhoc basis. It is thus inevitable need of the time and Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) took an initiative to establish National Drought/Environment monitoring and Early Warning Centre (NDMC) in 2004-05 after the worst drought during 1999- 2001 in Pakistan. The main objective is to monitor drought situation in the country and issue advisory before time. Its national centre is in Islamabad while four Regional Drought Monitoring Centers (RDMC’s) are in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta. These four RDMC’s cover those region which comes under their jurisdiction. These centers serve as a hub for the monitoring, 3 collection, consolidation and analysis of drought related data from all the possible sources in the country. In order to strength the network, 50 Automatic weather stations (AWS) have been installed in different regions particularly the drought prone areas of the country. The data of eleven meteorological parameters (air temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, dew point, sea level pressure, station level pressure, solar radiations, soil moisture at standard depths(5,10,20,50,100)cm and snow level are transmitted through satellite and GPRS technology after 3 hours. So, it has now become easy to access the data of remote areas of the country. NDMC has installed 335 Ordinary Rainguages have been installed at districts level in four provinces as shown in figure-1 Total Ordinary Rainguages Installed Balochistan 82 Punjab 83 KPK 42 Sindh 128 Pakistan 335 Rainguages Figure-1 Rain-gauges Network of Pakistan by NDMC NDMC also monitoring the water level situation of small dams in Barani areas of the country. NDMC using different indices like Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Normalized difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Cumulative Precipitation Anomaly (CPA), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI), Percent of normal, Probability of occurrence, Percentage departure and soil moisture analysis etc to monitor drought. NDMC issues fortnightly drought bulletin of the country. 4 Negotiations are underway with NGO‘s and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for utilization of drought advisories / bulletin to end users. 2. Historical Background. The Indian sub-continent is predominantly characterized by a tropical monsoon climate and entire regime is distinguished mainly by the differences in rainfall both in quantity and distribution. The most important feature is the regional and temporal alteration of atmospheric flow patterns associated with monsoon. There are two rainfall systems operating in the region (a) Southwest or Summer monsoon and (b) Northeast or the Winter monsoon. Fortunately Pakistan also falls in this region which receive heavy amount of rainfall in summer due to SW monsoon and in winter due to western disturbances. The summer monsoon accounts for 70 to 80% of the annual rainfall over major parts of South Asia (IMD, 2009). In Pakistan, summer monsoon accounts 60 to 70% of the annual rainfall during July to September (Chaudhry, 1992). There is a large variability in the monsoon rainfall on both space and time scales. Droughts in Pakistan region are mainly due to various kinds of failures of rains from southwest monsoon. Also there seems to be some association between El Nino and La Nina events and weak monsoons. Pakistan frequently experiences several droughts. The Punjab province experienced the worst droughts in 1899, 1920 and 1935. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) experienced the worst droughts in 1902 and 1951, while Sindh had its worst droughts in 1871, 1881,1899,1931,1947 and 1999. Over a more than hundred year period between 1871-1988, 11 out of 21 drought years were El Nino years. The El Nino phase of the Southern Oscillations (ENSO) has a direct impact on drought in Pakistan as it poses mainly negative impact on summer monsoon. Due to climate change, wet and dry cycles some years we receive more rains in wet spell and in dry spell we receive less rain. Due to less rain we have drought and heavy rain we have floods (flash flood, urban flood, coastal flood and river flood). 3. Rainfall Distribution (April–June) 2016 During the second quarter of the year (April-June) 2016, Normal (+100 %) precipitation was observed over Pakistan. During the quarter high temporal and spatial variability precipitation was observed. Normally May and June are the hottest months in the country and northern areas and south western parts received very less amount of rainfall. However, some convection rainfall lessened the moisture stress in the country along with some gusty winds. The evaporation rate remained very high during this quarter. But during this quarter, amount of rainfall was well above normal as predicted by the Pakistan Meteorological department in seasonal forecast. During Apirl 5 2016, well-below normal(-91.1 %) rainfall received in Sindh, (-52.0%) in Punjab, (-29.4%) in Gilgit-Baltistan/Kashmir and below normal (-17.8%) in Balochistan,. During May 2016, rainfall was below normal in Gilgit-Baltistan/Kashmir, in Sindh (-11.2%) whereas near normal rainfall is recived in punjab (-8.0%) and Balochistan (-7.7%), while in KP, it was above normal (15.90%). During June 2016, amount of rainfall was well above normal in Sindh (155.3%), Balochistan (45.2%), and 16.0% both in Punjab and Sindh whereas it was below normal in Gilgit- Baltistan/Kashmir (-64.7%). The figure shows the percentage area weighed departure rainfall occurred during (April-June) 2016. Viewing the rainfall distribution on province basis, over Sindh and KPPunjab, it was highly above-normal (53.0%) and (41.2%) respectively, over Balochistan (19.8%), while It was well below normal over GB-Kashmir (-121.5) and Punjab(-43.9%) as shown in figure-2 Figure-2 percentage departure of rainfall during (April-June) 2016 Despite some cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean surface waters, ENSO indicators remain neutral and well shy of La Niña thresholds. In contrast, a strong negative Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) event continues, with ocean temperature well above average in the eastern Indian Ocean and below 6 average near Africa All climate models indicate more cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean is likely, but only two of eight models exceed La Niña thresholds for an extended period. A La Niña Watch (indicating a 50% chance of La Niña in 2016) remains, but if La Niña does develop it would most likely be weak. The monthly and seasonal analysis on regional and country basis are as shown below in figure-3. Figure-3 spatial distribution of rainfall during (April-June) 2016 of Pakistan Rainfall and Temperature April 2016: Water is the most important climatic factor that is very vital for the existence of plants. Punjab, KP, GB and AJ&K received three rainfall spells during 1-4, 9-11 and 17-20 April. Sindh and Balochistan received light rain showers. In general Punjab received around 20 mm of 7 rainfall. The rainfall was on highside in Murree and other northern parts of the province. It gradually tappered towards south with Sargodha receiving 21 mm, Multan 22 mm and D.G Khan 25 mm. The rainfall in the plains of KP was around 100 mm. The mountainous ranges of Malam Jabba received rain of 371 mm, Parachinar 264 mm, Kalam 346 mm, Dir 237 mm, Saidu Sharif 186 mm, Chitral 150 mm, Mirkhani 125 mm, Balakot 111 mm, Drosh 102 mm, Lower Dir 101 mm.